90 BULLETIN OF THE NUT TALL 



strictures that are hardly deserved. My Catalogue of the Birds of 

 New England was, at first, only intended to be a simple list, without 

 note or comment, transferring to a challenged list such species given 

 by others as my own judgment led me to question, and adding the 

 names of recent additions. This list I gave for what it was worth, 

 expecting and desiring to have it amended and improved. But this 

 writer seems to have totally misapprehended, in several essential 

 respects, the purpose proposed in my list. It was but an initiative 

 towards a complete and reliable list of the birds of New England, 

 based upon the sure foundation of undisputed facts. Mere opinions, 

 no matter by whom held, crude inferences from insulated facts, and 

 still less empty conjectures, without data, were of no value in my 

 eyes, and wholly irrelevant. We had had quite too much of this 

 already, and our local lists had been overloaded with, and rendered 

 comparatively valueless by, smart guesses and shrewd anticipations 

 of coming occurrences. 



Nor was it any part of my original design to indicate the charac- 

 ter of the presence of birds in the New England States. At the 

 last moment, and when it could only be done very briefly, and there- 

 fore incompletely, my friend, Mr. J. A. Allen, persuaded me to add 

 this feature, after the whole article was in type, and when it could 

 only be done so far as was possible, without materially adding to its 

 length. Of course the additions are very brief, and never ex- 

 haustive. 



" H. A. P.," apparently not appreciating the real purport of these 

 notes, is at the quite unnecessary pains to supplement them with 

 additions, all of them more or less liable to exceptional criticism. 

 For instance, Turdus migratorius is given by me as a general sum- 

 mer resident, which is certainly correct, so far as it goes. Of course 

 the merest tyro in ornithology knows that the Robin is also migra- 

 tory in the spring and in the fall, and also that birds of this species 

 may be met with irregularly and occasionally during winter in 

 various parts of New England. But these peculiarities are many- 

 sided, and to have done the subject full justice, with proper dis- 

 crimination, would have required more space than I had at my dis- 

 posal. " H. A. P." naively informs us that the Robin is a constant 

 resident in Southern New England. If by this he intends to have 

 us understand that the same individual Robins are constant resi- 

 dents with us, I take issue with him. I deny it to be a fact. The 

 individuals of this species that occupy New England in the summer 



